Sunday, 26 May 2013

imid souls may point to the co-existence in India of myriad laws with minimal implementation, and at the growing spiral of bribes and fixing of cases as evidence that, as Lenin once wrote, "better less, but better" is what is needed in matters of legislation. However, to our intrepid legal eagle, Kapil Sibal, there is no problem in India that cannot be reduced to legal terms. Are people starving to death in India? Legislate a Food Security Act that ignores administrative and financial constraints, and India's population will miraculously be well fed.

The streets of Dubai, London and Miami are littered with relatives of the country's power elite, but if there be anything suspicious in the fact that those admitting to relatively minuscule levels of income can spend many tens of times more than their declared income in prolonged stays at expensive foreign locations, the Sibal remedy would be to pass the "Law to Regulate Foreign Visits", which would as usual leave the influential untouched while adding yet another layer of harassment to the existing misery of the 1.26 billion minus two hundred thousand citizens with access to the powerful and the wealthy, two groups that have seamlessly merged in modern India.

There are laws which set limits not on the expenditure of a candidate, but lay down expenses at such a low limit that it is almost inevitable that the process of election entails the filing of a false affidavit, thereby creating a them a contempt for the law. If there are candidates with better access to money, so be it. What is needed is to ensure that candidates are transparent about the moneys raised and their source, so that voters may judge whether they merit their trust.

Because almost all the income of a candidate is in the unrecorded column, there is complete opacity about the sources of funding, with the result that several candidates have dubious sponsors who subsequently get protection for their crimes, once their agent gets elected and, in more than a few cases, begins to hold ministerial office. Surprisingly, Sibal has yet to bring in a law that prescribes life in prison (or that favourite of the media in India, a death sentence) to those guilty of under-reporting their election expenses. Of course, while this columnist has long held the view that 90% of the laws in India should be repealed, he would favour legislation which sets clear limits on the personal wealth of ministers and their close relations. Political power and big money are pools of privilege prone to misuse, and the two coming together creates a cocktail which very often leads to abuse.

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Political power and big money are pools of privilege prone to misuse. The two coming together creates a cocktail which leads to abuse.

There was a time when Ram Jethmalani as Law Minister was working on bringing the law in India into the 20th century from the period from where the British colonial authority (the fount of modern law in the independent Republic of India) drew the inspiration for their numerous enactments, the 19th. However this effort at making the law less of a nightmare for those without money and power was aborted when Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee removed Jethmalani from the post.

In case a leap into the 20th century and its imperatives is not beyond Prime Manmohan Singh, he needs to set up a commission of eminent lawyers who know each of the alleyways and byways of their arcane craft and task them with creating a penal code and a code of criminal and civil procedure that is just fifty rather than two-hundred years behind the times. Jethmalani's blocked efforts need to be re-continued, although doing so may fall foul of a philosophy which sees more law as the answer to any lack in the administration or otherwise of this country.

It was predictable that Kapil Sibal would come up with the suggestion of yet another law to fix match fixing. Clearly, the intrepid minister has limitless faith in the ability of laws to alter behaviour patterns rooted in external conditions and internal self-interest. However, the Law Minister needs to be weaned away from his zeal to make India as litigious a society as the US has become. Match fixing will not go away with a match fixing law. What will come in its wake are yet more enforcers demanding still more bribes. If only Kapil Sibal were one of us, he would soon see for himself the way in which the myrmidons of the law have converted ordinary human lives into a wasteland of dreams gone sour.

Friday, 24 May 2013

M D NalapatFriday, May 24, 2013 - Paris is eager for purchases of defense equipment from the GCC countries. Its economy is dangerously close to stall speed, and the Francois Hollande team does not have either the will or the political support needed to implement the reforms needed for France to avoid joining Greece, Spain, Ireland and Portugal in the ICU. The hard-nosed GCC countries are known to have informally made the lifting of the EU arms embargo on Syria a condition of fresh arms purchases from France, just as they are concentrating minds in the UK by pointing to the fact that London and overseas banking centres controlled from the city are still the gateways for the bulk of GCC cash investment. Because of Berlin’s reluctance to defy both Paris and London, it is almost certain that the EU arms embargo on supplying deadly munitions to the groups warring against the Bashar Assad-led government will quietly be allowed to lapse in a few weeks time, thereby allowing France in particular to oblige Qatar and Saudi Arabia by sending weaponry to the Syrian rebels

Although for the record the EU will claim that the munitions being supplied will go only to carefully selected groups (which are presumably free of extremist elements), the reality in Syria today is that practically the entire fighting is being done by extremist elements led by Jabhat al Nusra (JN). Wisely, the JN has distributed its key commanders across the spectrum of opposition to Assad, thereby controlling the entire process without seeming to.Each significant resistance group has within its highest echelons individuals affiliated to Jabhat al Nusra, who communicate with each other and coordinate battlefield strategy so as to ensure success against a determined enemy that has the support of the majority of the population of Syria, including Christian, Shia and Druze besides the bulk of the Sunni population.

Less than 15% of the Syrian population seek the replacement of Bashar Assad by the armed groups warring against him, even though few are admirers of the Syrian strongman whose family has run the country for four decades and been unable to unlock the immense talent of the Syrian people in a way which would make Syria as prosperous as some other parts of the Arab states. Although the EU is lurching from one catastrophic policy blunder into another, the fact remains that its intelligence agencies are aware that Jabhat al Nusra supporters are forming the coordinating apparatus for the entire armed revolt against Assad.

Nevertheless, they cannot ignore the economic considerations caused by the desire of the GCC to see Assad replaced by a ruler who shares the Wahabbi ideology favoured by key elements in the GCC. Now that China, Brazil and Africa have become attractive alternative destinations for GCC capital, it is imperative that the EU indulge the oil-rich grouping by fulfilling its geopolitical requirement of marginalizing the Shia throughout the region. This can be achieved by (a) replacing Assad with an ideological cousin of the GCC (b) bringing down the mullahcracy in Iran and (c) hobbling the Nuri al-Maliki government in Iraq by strengthening power sharing arrangements with groups opposed to the Iraqi Prime Minister. In all these moves, the EU is marching in lockstep with the GCC, so much so that it is the latter which is leading the former rather than the reverse. Money is not only talking but shouting out loud.

This columnist respects the GCC and has found his limited interaction with elements of its leadership marked by cordiality. Arab culture is thousands of years old and the Arab people are both highly evolved as well as warm of heart and noble in spirit. Which is why he is concerned that in their anti-Shia zeal, the GCC countries are in the process of unlocking a genie that could plunge the entire region into chaos and benefit politically only the Muslim Brotherhood and its many offshoots. Ultimately, the Brotherhood seeks to replace the hereditary rulers of the GCC with others from their anks, following the precedent established in Egypt, where the Brotherhood has slowly begun to dominate state and other institutions after the Morsi government was sworn in to accolades from the NATO bloc. Within that military alliance, Ankara has worked zealously to ensure that NATO supports the Muslim Brotherhood’s ambitions for the region (minus, at present, the GCC). It is this alliance of NATO and the Brotherhood which is behind the resistance in Syria to the Assads, and which is now going to open the sluice gates to a flow of sophisticated weaponry to Syrian and other rebel fighters. While John Kerry, Cameron and Hollande frequently assert that such weapons will go only to “moderate” elements, they are lying and know it. The battle against Assad has been taken over by fanatic elements which use moderates as a cover by giving them titles without field responsibility. It is these individuals, there to provide camouflage to the extremist leadership, who deal with EU interlocutors and pretend to control the armed struggle. While this will fool gullible populations within the NATO bloc, fed as they are on misinformation peddled by a media that has thrown objectivity aside in its pell mell rush to fulfill the goals of NATO, certainly there are many policymakers aware of the truth. Such weapons will go to the hands of those who will move on to the European and GCC theatres once Bashar Assad goes the Kadhafi way. However, Cameron, Hollanbde and Kerry are forcing the pace much as George W Bush, Dick Cheney and Tony Blair did in Iraq in 2003,again against better advice.

The Assad regime knows that it is “Do or Die”. Once the arms embargo is lifted, they will take the war into the camp of their geopolitical tormentors. The conflict will spread to Turkey and to the GCC, where suicide bombings will become an everyday event. A conflict largely confined to Syria will spread across the region, thereby causing instability at a time when the global economy is yet to escape from the clutches of recession. Francois Hollande, in his eagerness to sell armaments and thereby boost his economy, is unleashing a tide that neither he or his allies will be able to control.http://pakobserver.net/detailnews.asp?id=207669

Sunday, 19 May 2013

onday will see the arrival of Li Keqiang, China's new Prime Minister, to India. Thanks to the ill-timed and indefensible entry of some People's Liberation Army (PLA) soldiers into the territory around the Daulat Beg Oldi airstrip in Ladakh, he will land in a country deeply suspicious of Beijing. For weeks after the 15 April incursion, the media in India was filled with blood-curdling rhetoric from those whose only exposure to combat is watching it on television.

Because of the neglect of indigenous private industry by the Ministry of Defence since the 1980s, this country has earned the doubtful accolade of being the world's top purchaser of armaments. Hence, any talk of war would be music to the ears of arms manufacturers in Russia, France and other countries that together are the sources of India's growing purchases of weapons systems, whether land, sea or air. Not surprisingly, the intelligence agencies of these countries, especially France, which is now desperate to stave off depression through a boost of its arms sales, specialise in planting reports about the imminence of an attack by China on India. The 15 April incursion was itself presented as at the very least the prelude to a full-scale attack on India.

Certainly, the Chinese military has within its ranks several individuals, who look at India through lenses manufactured by the Pakistan army. In the past, it was US policy towards India that was subject to a veto by the Pakistan army, the factor which prevented Bill Clinton from taking advantage of the opportunity provided by the 1992 collapse of the Soviet Union and a non-Nehru family PM to forge an alliance with India. The Clinton administration was obsessed with Kashmir and allowed the chance to slip, much as the Kennedy administration had in 1963, and for the same reason, the impulse to get India to surrender that part of Kashmir, which was in its possession before Jawaharlal Nehru's 1949 cease-fire decision took effect. Indeed, despite the adoration that Monica Lewinski's partner in aerobic exercise excites in India, the reality is that the Clinton administration was viciously hostile to India, not only in the matter of Kashmir, but on the issue of India's nuclear program and its need to ensure high-tech platforms.

Subsequently, it was Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who led the successful charge within the so-called Obama (but in actuality Clinton Lite) 2009-2012 administration to deny India the hi-tech exemptions, which would have ensured that US companies had an edge in business dealings with India. Hillary Clinton's love for India has mostly been expressed in visits to ethnic restaurants in pricey hotels in India and not in more practical ways.

Until China escapes from the death-grip of the Pakistan army's Indiaphobia, relations between Beijing and Delhi will continue to be hostage to the PLA's Pakistan-centric view of India as a threat rather than as China's biggest international opportunity. In telecom, energy and infrastructure, only the India market can allow Chinese companies to win back the markets lost as a result of the EU slowdown.

Chinese companies price their offerings about 30% to 40% cheaper than do their international competitors, and hence are attractive to Indian corporates looking at options which would enable the consumer to have the benefits of telecom and electric power at rates other than extortionate. Unfortunately for them, the PLA's friskiness on the border (which it has ensured remains undelineated) threatens to have the effect of blocking access in India to Chinese companies.

Hopefully, President Xi and Premier Li will be able to educate the generals about the fact that the economy, which is sustaining PLA expansion, needs India if it is to continue to grow near the levels seen during the past three decades. It is time Beijing overrode the Pakistan army's veto and exchanged maps with India which show the exact ground position of troops on both sides of the frontier. Not only with India but across the arc of Asia, the PLA has become almost as negative a factor for China as the Pakistan army is for Islamabad. The immense goodwill secured during earlier decades because of Deng Xiaoping's policy of peaceful rise is being dissipated by muscle flexing directed at India, Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines.

Should the Obama administration shed its Clintonite coils and go in for a 21st century version of Lend Lease, transferring surplus military equipment to these four countries, Washington would gain two additional allies (in India and Vietnam) besides Manila and Tokyo.

The PLA's aggressive posturing is helping to create an Asian military alliance which excludes China, besides helping international competitors to get regional governments to block Chinese competition. Until the military is brought under control, China will not be able to actualise the vast synergy possible between itself and the neighbourhood.

he recent warning by Standard & Poor's (S&P) of a future downgrade of India to junk status is motivated by the urgent need to divert funds worldwide from emerging markets back to the European Union, claim key players in the London and Singapore financial markets off the record. "Should Greece go under, and this is what its fundamentals indicate, the resultant domino effect will finally claim France, which is incapable of implementing the reform measures needed for fiscal stability", an analyst said. Hence, he claims, "the need to divert funds back into the EU" from emerging markets such as India. An analyst in Singapore estimated that "more than $30 billion deposits would almost immediately flow back to developed markets from India should there be a ratings downgrade". He warned that "although the fundamentals in India warrant an upgrade rather than a downgrade, the interest of the agencies is their own markets, and to try and secure these, they are ready to sacrifice India". Those in touch with the rating agencies refute this by saying that no such trade-off exists, and that "our ratings are fair". Given their sorry record during the 2007-09 financial crisis and their persistent refusal to admit that Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain (otherwise known as the PIGS) are bankrupt, there are not too many takers for such an endorsement.

Investors, many in developing markets in South Asia, East Asia and West Asia, have lost close to US$4.2 trillion during 2007-09 "because they relied on the misleading and wholly inaccurate rankings given by these agencies on the financial instruments they held," a Singapore banker pointed out, adding that "investors in Asia have learnt nothing from that crisis. They continue to trust their savings with the same western financial conglomerates that caused them to make such huge losses just a few years ago."

A London analyst at a merchant bank warned that "the agencies know that telling the truth to Asian investors about the situation in Europe will cause panic, and are hence once again giving certificates of health even to those countries in the EU that they know are flat broke".

A Singapore analyst contrasted the "over-optimistic rankings" given to entities across both sides of the Atlantic with the more pessimistic evaluation given to India, and said that the reason for this "is to ensure a higher return for investors in North America and the EU out of India". He pointed out that "a downgrade would sharply increase the returns earned by those investors remaining in India", most of whom channel their moneys through the same financial institutions that "have a vested interest in higher returns". This allegation is denied by sources within top US and EU financial firms as "figments of a hyperactive imagination". What is, however, clear is that these entities are making a lot of profits out of India because of the foreign fund-friendly policies adopted by Team Manmohan.

An economist at a Singapore financial enterprise pointed out that "investible cash is mostly there in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and in China, Japan and Taiwan", and wondered why India was "ignoring these markets and continuing to look to the West for deliverance".

It may be mentioned that intelligence agencies within Government of India remain opposed to direct FDI from China and in several instances from the GCC. "This suits the financial conglomerates in the West, who want any funds flowing to India to be routed through them, for them to increase their profits and to regulate the flow of cash to India," a London banker said.

While the rating agencies deny suggestions of bias, others in the industry warn that the threats of a downgrade are ploys to divert money to collapsing European markets and to increase the already high returns from placing funds in India.

Saturday, 18 May 2013

M D NalapatFriday, May 17, 2013 - It is the easiest task in the world to influence commentators in the NATO bloc. Any individual who socialises with them, breaks bread, quaffs wine and enjoys the company of the opposite sex is seen as a “liberal”, a “person like us (PLU)”, thereby deserving of support. Or, if the mannerisms and lifestyles of such favoured folk deviate from the NATO-bloc norm, all that is needed to win the favour of media in the military bloc is to endlessly repeat such catch phrases as “human rights”, “freedom” or “self-determination”. Libya is a recent example of the way in which groups whose core ideology is toxic to western precepts won the backing of a gullible and reckless Nicholas Sarkozy.

Sadly, there is no statue in Benghazi or Tripoli to commemorate the man who was instrumental in the downfall of Muammar Kadhafi, the leader who followed the advice of his son Saif to surrender his WMD and his secrets to the UK and the US in exchange for protection. That amnesty lasted for less than nine years. By 2011,Kaddafy’s 2003 surrender of his fighting capacity was forgotten, and money, training and weapons given to the groups warring against his regime. Paris was only responding to the cues tossed in their direction by big buyers of French armaments (as well as fripperies). Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE wanted Kadhafi to go, a desire shared by Turkey, which has under R T Erdogan adopted the same geopolitical vision as the GCC. Forgotten is the fact that the ruling families of the GCC have reached their eminence because they were willing to fight against Turkey during the time of the Ottoman Empire. As discussed, the reason why Francois Hollande backs the same groiups supported by the Ankara-Doha-Riyadh alliance (or ADR for short) is his anxiety to please some of the largest buyers of French defense equipment.

Now that India is paying out more than $20 billion to purchase French military aircraft, thereby saving the industry from closure at the expense of jobs in India, the other likely markets are mostly within the GCC and ASEAN, and Hollande is hoping that the lifting of the EU arms embargo on Syria will quickly be followed by orders for defense equipment from Doha, Abu Dhabi and Riyadh.

As for the UK, it is no secret that London is the destination of much of the moneys made by the GCC countries from the sale of oil. To ensure that these important customers of the high-cost and clearly risky UK financial markets continue to trust London with their immense capital hoard, it is vital that David Cameron fulfill the desire of these capitals to get the EU embargo lifted. Although Germany does sell defense equipment to the GCC, as well as act as a magnet for some GCC cash, it is to the credit of Chancellor Angela Merkel that this self-interest has not prevented her from being open about the risks involved in arming those who are visibly cannibalistic in their nature. Tragically, such fiends use the name of a great religion to boost their support base, when each of their actions is wholly contrary to the great faith of Islam.

France and the UK have joined US Secretary of State John Kerry (who has the same outlook as the Clintons when it comes to foreign policy, that only Europe counts and within the rest, only those with cash to spare matter). It was Hillary Clinton who caused the long-term disaster to US interests that is the “Arab Spring” and the Libya-Syria intervention, and it will be John Kerry who continues down the path blazed by Hillary Clinton, the spouse of the US President who enabled the Taliban to take power in Kabul in 1996.

It was, again, Hillary Clinton who ceaselessly weakened the civilian government of Asif Ali Zardari by her hidden and overt interventions in matters internal to Pakistan, and it was Hillary who had a distaste for Mian Nawaz Sharif, the new civilian leader of Pakistan. Had Hillary her say, it would have been Imran Khan and his party who would have got a majority in the Pakistan National Assembly. The handsome and articulate Niazi Pathan leader knows how to mix and mingle in NATO-bloc society, just as Benazir Bhutto did in the past. However, the fact is that Imran Khan has been assisted in his electoral quest by none other than the Taliban, which exempted his party from the murderous assaults to which it subjected the others.

Several million voters who favoured the ANP and the PPP in particular were afraid to come out and vote because of the fear that they would not return from the exercise alive. This, plus the boost given to Imran Khan’s party, ensured that they were hopelessly weakened, while the electoral victory of the Lion of the Punjab, Mian Nawaz Sharif, was a borderline triumph rather than the comfortable majority he would have won, had voters not been confused and intimidated by the Taliban and the groups supported by them. Watching the crowds of affluent youth waltzing along with Imran Khan, it is impossible not to be reminded of the way similar youth joined hands with Ayatollah Khomeini to throw out the Shah of Iran, only to find themselves in a worse position than before.

Those in the NATO bloc who are admirers of Imran Khan — and this columnist was recently in London, and noted that the English countryside is dotted with stately homes where boosters of the Niazi Pathan leader stay — will need to look at the way he manages Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, now that he has seized the province from the ANP. His well-wishers, the Taliban, will seek to enforce their own version of law in the province, and make it a safe haven for their fighters. Imran Khan will very soon come face to face with the reality that Pakistan has far more dangerous elements than those backing Asif Ali Zardari or Nawaz Sharif. In the view of this columnist, the former cricketer has entered into a Faustian bargain with groups that seek nothing less than the destruction of the Pakistan state.

It was telling that Imran was the only major politician specifically exempted from the Taliban’s vicious assault on democracy. Not that any of his NATO-bloc admirers bothered about such a choice of friends. Indeed, in his rush to come to power, Imran Khan has made compromises that will severely limit his freedom of action in the province that he now controls. Should he convert Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa into a Taliban stronghold, rather than join hands with the ANP to weaken and in time eliminate the militia, he will be doing a disservice to Pakistan.

Of course, guided as they are by the extremist-infiltrated intelligence agencies of some of the West Asian states, the NATO bloc is likely to turn as blind an eye to this development as they did to the steady and largely silent growth of the Taliban in Afghanistan during 2005-7. However, for the many well-intentioned people who supported him in the elections, the way he administers this crucial frontier state will be core in deciding whether, by dancing with wolves, Imran Khan has become a problem rather than a solution.http://pakobserver.net/detailnews.asp?id=207028

Sunday, 12 May 2013

CBI director Ranjit Sinha (right) during the investiture ceremony of 16th batch of CBI sub-inspectors in Ghaziabad on Friday. PTI

shwani Kumar has been known in Delhi more for his stylish hairstyle than for anything related to his politics. Along with Anand Sharma and others equally schooled in ways of charming the powerful, he has formed a prominent part of the Delhi "inside track", i.e., those with access to the founts of authority. With his selection as Law Minister, reportedly because both Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as well as his immediate family have a deep reserve of personal affection for him, Ashwani Kumar entered into a new stage of orbit, where from a supplicant he became a "decider", in the language of George W. Bush of Iraq.

Because precedents are important in law in India, with several arguments being based on what is said to have taken place in faraway locations during times long gone, Law Minister Ashwani Kumar followed the precedent adopted by his predecessors and took a personal interest in the work of CBI investigators. Should there ever be an honest probe into the functioning of the CBI over the past two decades, it will become clear that the so-called "independent watchdog" is in reality not so much a "caged parrot" as a faithful hound dog of Authority.

Indeed, in practice, deferring to the views of the Prime Minister's Office and the Law Minister by the CBI is standard practice. Should any enquiry be ordered into the Ashwani-CBI episode, it will have very little effect except on the political career of Kumar and his boss Manmohan Singh. What is needed is for an independent commission to examine the entire two-decade functioning of the CBI and determine the extent to which the agency's conclusions were tainted by orders conveyed by the government of the day.

A few simple parameters would suffice. Rather than the voluminous list of cases that the CBI is called upon to investigate, and which has been the source of the lifestyles of former CBI officials and their families, a list of just ten top cases can be culled out, and the investigation confined to just this list. Clearly, it would need to cover each government that has been in power since 1993, beginning with that headed by P.V. Narasimha Rao and going on to Deve Gowda, I.K. Gujral, A.B. Vajpayee and now Manmohan Singh.

In particular, certain spectacular failures of the CBI need to be examined in minute detail, such as the trajectory of cases against prominent politicians and fixers, both domestic and foreign. All too often, the CBI has lost cases in court, giving rise to the suspicion that the agency was less than eager to ensure that justice got meted out. Was there any involvement of the then PMO or the then Law Minister in such cases? Was there an order to the CBI to lose, and was the brief given to the lawyers arguing the case for the prosecution vitiated by such an interest in ensuring that the guilty escape? In several instances, the CBI has managed the feat of losing cases in court that ought to have been walkovers.

As everywhere else, there is a tendency in India to go for simple solutions. Anna Hazare, with his invaluable experience in public affairs, is of the view that a Jan Lokpal with the same powers that Zia-ul-Haq enjoyed in Pakistan would be able to finish off corruption in this country. This miraculous being would have the time and the will, besides the patience, to investigate cases of corruption involving any of several million government officials. Certainly, especially if someone within the Anna Hazare retinue became the Jan Lokpal (hopefully someone who has had the privilege of a "lal batti" on his car) this scourge of the wicked would never himself turn corrupt. There are those, and this columnist is among them, who are cynical enough to say that the Jan Lokpal as conjured by Anna Hazare and his acolytes would very soon be a wealthy man, as would those having access to him.

Meanwhile, corruption in India would continue to gallop. The same sorry result will happen if action gets taken only against Ashwani Kumar, who has clearly obeyed one order too many from his superiors. What is needed is a commission comprising not just of present and retired folks on government salaries, but chosen from among the overwhelming majority of the population who have all their lives been at the receiving end of the endemic mismanagement which passes for governance in India. This team should delve into the 10 cases selected and at the very least, name and shame those connected with the functioning of the CBI who have bought and sold justice for thirty pieces of silver.

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About Prof. M. D. Nalapat

Prof. Madhav Das Nalapat (aka MD Nalapat or Monu Nalapat), holds the UNESCO Peace Chair and is Director of the Department of Geopolitics at Manipal Academy of Higher Education, India. The former Coordinating Editor of the Times of India, he writes extensively on security, policy and international affairs. Prof. Nalapat has no formal role in government, although he is said to influence policy at the highest levels. @MD_Nalapat

MD Nalapat's anthology 'Indutva' (1999)

In 1999, Har-Anand published Indutva an anthology of MD Nalapat's 1990s columns from the Times of India. The individual columns are posted here, in 1998 and 1999 of the blog archive, though the exact dates of publication are uncertain.